Origins of Capitalism: Primary Sources

Searching DiscoverE for Primary Sources

A primary source is a document, recording or other source of information created at the time being studied, by an authoritative source, usually one with direct personal knowledge of the events being described.

Government Documents

Full-text digital copies of British Parliamentary publications including Hansard, official parliamentary debates, and the British sessional papers, the working papers of government. Extremely important primary sources for British, European, U.S. and world history.

This digital manuscript archive gathers together 16th- and 17th-century British State Papers and links them to their fully text-searchable calendars, offering scholars unprecedented access to the behind-the-scenes workings of the Tudor and Stuart governments.

Primary Source Databases

Below you will find a select list of databases that are particularly appropriate for your coursework. This list is not exhaustive.

British Online ArchivesThis series brings together a wealth of collections spanning two centuries of Britain's colonisation, commercial, missionary and even literary relations with Africa and the Americas. It includes materials such as journals, correspondence, official records and personal papers spanning two centuries of Britain's colonial, commercial, missionary and literary relations with Africa , India and the Americas.

China: Trade, Politics & Culture 1793-1980This database provides English-language sources relating to China and the West from 1793 to 1980. Key documents relating to the Chinese Maritime Customs service, from Robert Hart to Frederick Maze are accessible and searchable alongside original reports of the Amherst and Macartney embassies. There are letters relating to the first Opium War, survivors descriptions of the Boxer War.

Defining Gender, 1450-1910Defining Gender is a collection of original source materials from British and European archives. Documents from 21 libraries are thematically organized by areas: Conduct and Politeness, Domesticity and the Family, Consumption and Leisure, Education and Sensibility, and The Body.

Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural ExchangeThe Global Commodities database provides primary source materials arranged around fifteen major trade goods from world history such as chocolate, coffee, cotton, and opium. The project touches on themes of exploration and discovery; imperialism and colonialism; trade wars; translocation and economic geography; slavery; taste; and the evolution of global branding. The resource complements and integrates with the Empire Online database.

India, Raj and EmpireManuscript Collections from the National Library of Scotland documenting this history from the foundation of the East India Company in 1615 to the granting of independence for India and Pakistan in 1947. Sources range from the papers of key East India Company representatives and colonial officials to records of daily life in Agra, Bombay, Lahore, and Madras.

History VaultThe History Vault is a searchable database of online historical documents and digitized microfilm collections.Relevant collections for this course include:

• Southern Life and African American History Part I, 1775-1915, Plantation Records, (digitized selections from the microfilm collection Records of Southern Antebellum Plantations and Records of Southern Plantations from the Great Migration), • Slavery & the Law

Making of the Modern World (Goldsmiths'-Kress)This digitized version of Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature is the most comprehensive collection for researching the literature of economics and business from 1450 to 1850.

Making of Modern LawSearchable full-text collection of 22,000 treatises on American and British Commonwealth law published between 1800 and 1926.

Sabin AmericanaSabin Americana, 1500–1926 is a fully searchable online collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Sabin Americana, 1500–1926 is rich in original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, religious history and more.

Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007An important portal for slavery and abolition studies, this database brings together documents and collections covering the period 1490-2007 from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world. Subjects include varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.

Travel Writing, Spectacle and World HistoryThis database contains primary source accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century. Documents span from 1818-1970 and cover topics such as: architecture; art; the British Empire; climate; customs; exploration; family life; housing; industry; language; monuments; natural history; politics; race; religion; science; and war.

Virginia Company ArchivesIncludes the complete Ferrar Papers held in Magdalene College, Cambridge; transcripts by David R. Ransome of documents relating to the Virginia Company; and Susan Kingsbury’s Records of the Virginia Company of London (1906-35). Documents the founding, economic development, and ethnic and gender composition of early Virginia, relations among colonists and Native Americans, and the Ferrar family’s interest in the settlement of North America.

The Ancestry Library Edition collection (also known as Ancestry Plus or Ancestry.com) is a major source of census and other records of interest to historical, social, and genealogical researchers.

It includes: U.S. federal census roll images and indexes from 1790 to 1930; U.K. and Ireland census materials; vital and church records; passenger and immigration lists; military records; court, land, and probate records; historical maps; the American Genealogical Biographical Index, Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage books; WWI draft registration cards; slave narratives; and much more.

Ancestry Library Edition is available for on-campus use only.

Subjects: History US, History World, Sociology, Statistics and Demography, Archives and Primary Sources, Biographies, Government Information

Newspaper databases

The Times Digital Archive offers full page and article images of the Times (London) with searchable full text, including searchable advertisements and photographs, back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue. This archive does not include the Sunday Times, a newspaper independent of the Times.

The largest single collection of 17th and 18th century English news media available from the British Library. The collection includes more than 1000 pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks and newspapers from the period. The collection covers more than 200 years of accounts from newspapers from England, Ireland, Scotland and a handful of papers from British colonies in the Americas and Asia.

This database consists of full-text national and regional newspapers from Victorian Britain, digitized from the collection of the British Library. It is the sister product to 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers (1604-1800).

Primary source journal and literature databases

This collection contains the most significant British pamphlets from the 19th century held in UK research libraries. More than 20,000 pamphlets from seven UK institutions provide an immensely rich and coherent corpus of primary sources with which to study the socio-political and economic landscape of 19th century Britain. A good number of these pamphlets cover topics germane to the French Revolution.

British Periodicals Collection I consists of more than 160 journals that comprise the UMI microfilm collection Early British Periodicals, the equivalent of 5,238 printed volumes containing approximately 3.1 million pages. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts and the social sciences.

Digital images of every page of 150,000 books published during the 18th Century. With full-text searching of approximately 33 million pages, Eighteenth Century Collections Online allows researchers new methods of access to critical information in the fields of history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, science and more.

HathiTrust is a very large scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via the Google Books project and Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally by libraries.

Nineteenth Century Collections OnlineNineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) is a full-text database of primary sources from the 19th Century, including monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more.